A few months ago, I wrote a post about what is probably my favorite Phoebe Bridgers song I Know the End. This is a follow-up to that about Chinese Satellite, another song on her sophomore record Punisher.
Bridgers’ music often describes a sense of alienation. In Chinese Satellite, this alienation is related to what has been termed the “God-shaped hole” in modern Western societies.
Took a tour to see the stars
But they weren’t out tonight
So I wished hard on a Chinese satellite
I want to believe
Instead, I look at the sky and I feel nothing
You know I hate to be alone
I want to be wrong
In the song, Bridgers finds herself trying - and ultimately failing - to believe that God is out there. She comments on this explicitly in an interview:
I have no faith — and that’s what it’s about. My friend Harry put it in the best way ever once. He was like, “Man, sometimes I just wish I could make the Jesus leap.” But I can’t do it. I mean, I definitely have weird beliefs that come from nothing. I wasn’t raised religious. I do yoga and stuff. I think breathing is important. But that’s pretty much as far as it goes. I like to believe that ghosts and aliens exist, but I kind of doubt it. I love science — I think science is like the closest thing to that that you’ll get. If I’m being honest, this song is about turning 11 and not getting a letter from Hogwarts, just realizing that nobody’s going to save me from my life, nobody’s going to wake me up and be like, “Hey, just kidding. Actually, it’s really a lot more special than this, and you’re special.”1
I think Chinese Satellite is a great jumping off point to discuss:
- Modern attempts to fill this God-shaped hole
- Examine implicit beliefs in modern Western societies about religion and faith
So what are some of the modern stand-ins for faith - the antidotes to that God-shaped hole Bridgers alludes to, either in Chinese Satellite itself or in how she’s talked about the song?
I: Aliens
Aliens and religion have a history together via UFO religions. UFO religions interpret traditional religious experiences through the lens of science and technology.2 UFO religions take a physicalist perspective, meaning that they view all things as explainable by material causes. An example of this would be interpreting the divine chariot seen by Ezekial (in Ezekial 1:1-3:15) as a UFO.
UFO religions straddle a line between faith and empiricism. On one hand, there’s a hope that there’s something bigger than us out there. On the other, it’s still tethered to the physical: aliens, if they exist, are conceived of as flesh-and-blood beings, not spiritual entities.
II: Science
Scientism is the belief that the scientific method is the best and only way to arrive at truth. Its clear that when scientific reasoning is applied to religious claims - miracles, divine creation, revelation - those claims often crumble. But is science the right tool for that job? Are all truths susceptible to rational analysis?
I would venture to say no. Religious texts are not meant to be inerrant factual records. Interpreting religious texts/claims literally is a phenomenon arising “from the triumph of a distinctly modern concept of what constitutes reliable knowledge.”3 The early Church fathers did not read the Bible as a scientific document but rather as a narrative that points to spiritual truths.
III: Mindfulness
Meditation has become a way for secular people to feel connected to something larger (spiritual-but-not-religious folks). It is granted legitimacy via studies pointing to measurable benefits and, more generally, the tools of empiricism.
We trust that the scan of a brain in meditation is telling us something objective and true. But, as David L. McMahan points out, that objectivity is an illusion laden with ideological assumptions. The machine reflects human assumptions about what counts as real or true. It might provide us some comfort to think we can determine truths of the mind from outside the mind, but everything about the machine - the design, what it measures, and the significance of the measurements - is based on human judgment, reasoning, observation, and argument.4
God or no God
My friend Harry put it in the best way ever once. He was like, “Man, sometimes I just wish I could make the Jesus leap.”
There are some days when I wish I was an atheist so that I could feel Divinity’s love of the secular with the additional relish of having no name for what I felt, only knowing that, as Billie says of autumn in New York, “It’s good to live it again.”5
Obviously, I’ve been critical of some of the attitudes underlying Chinese Satellite’s message. I would hope its also obvious though that I’m a fan.
I was raised relatively religious. I don’t spurn it nor do I look back on it with particular fondness; I guess that if anything, it helped cement a devotion to the larger things in life. But I think I would’ve found my way here eventually anyway. “Here” meaning the place where everyone is: in search of something more - whether that more is found beyond this world or within it.6 And seeking more out of life just isn’t something you can fail at. It is the end to which all beings are moved.
Footnotes
A quote she gave for Apple Music↩︎
Pretty much everything I know about UFO religions comes from this ReligionForBreakfast video which in turn is mostly based on Benjamin E. Zeller’s Handbook of UFO Religions. I’ve yet to give it a read.↩︎
David Bentley Hart,The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, and Bliss 27.↩︎
David L. McMahan, Rethinking Meditation: Buddhist Meditative Practice in Ancient and Modern Worlds, 43.↩︎
Garret Keizer, The Courtesy of God↩︎
I’m thinking of another David L. McMahan quote here: “Many practitioners use meditation to assure themselves that there is ‘more than this’, more than the desacralized world portrayed by science. The ‘more’, however, is often sought within the ‘this’ – in deeper resonances, dimensions, and aesthetics of the here and now, rather than the more of another world in the future – the Pure Land or nirvana. It is a ‘more’ than affirms this-worldliness but at the same time attempts to break open secularism and show that this world exceeds what it seems to be on first glance…” David L. McMahan, Rethinking Meditation: Buddhist Meditative Practice in Ancient and Modern Worlds, 21.↩︎